The fintech Chime plans to cut 10% of its workforce, or about 150 employees, to take advantage of artificial intelligence efficiencies and innovate using smaller teams.
“The world is changing quickly and this means we need to keep evolving too,” Chime CEO Chris Britt said Friday in a memo seen by Banking Dive. “To continue to lead in the next era, we need to have the right structure, capabilities, and approach to our work.”
Britt detailed that structure, to some degree Friday.
“In some areas, that means a flatter structure and smaller squads,” Britt said. “Smaller teams with fewer layers are moving faster than ever and getting more done.”
The CEO also touched on the location of those teams.
“It also means bringing more teams into our offices because we know the best innovations, the fastest decision making and winning culture is created when tight knit teams collaborate in person,” he said.
And he emphasized a change in the nature of the work to be done.
“AI is changing what's possible but requires new skills,” Britt said.
The fintech counted 1,500 employees as of Dec. 31, and went public last year.
“As a public company, we must accelerate growth while continuing to demonstrate operating discipline to build an even stronger, more profitable business,” Britt said Friday.
Chime is far from alone among fintechs in whittling its workforce to adjust to the implementation of AI.
Block said in February it would slash its headcount by about 4,000 workers. Crypto.com, meanwhile, laid off roughly 180 employees in March. Bolt followed in April, cutting about 30% of its staff. And Coinbase in May said it trimmed its workforce by 700.
More recently, Robinhood said it would cut its staff by 10%, or roughly 295 employees, “to maintain a high performance culture, further accelerate product velocity, and remain lean and disciplined.”
The fintech’s CEO, Vlad Tenev, made no mention of AI but noted the reduction “creates even more opportunities for our most talented people to grow and take on greater responsibility.”
Not every fintech using AI is planning to cut jobs, though.
On a call in May, buy now, pay later platform Affirm’s CEO, Max Levchin, said his company is “not planning AI-related layoffs, full stop.”
“Long before AI tools came along, we had tooled ourselves up to be very efficient,” Levchin said. “These tools are giving us rocket boosters, wings, whatever metaphor you want, and we’re very happy for it.
“[AI] is just a thing we’re going to keep using to ship more,” he said.
However, some financial institutions have seen backlash from their C-suite’s treatment of AI’s effect on the workforce.
Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters apologized in May after framing his bank’s plan to shed 8,000 jobs over the next four years as “not cost cutting.”
“It’s replacing, in some cases, lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital we’re putting in,” Winters said during an investor day. “We don’t have job losses, but we do have job role reductions in favor of the machines, and that will accelerate as we go forward into AI.”
